


It's Been Years Since It's Been Clear

by wordslikelightning



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Gen, M/M, Mutants, Telepathy, Wingfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-02
Updated: 2013-06-02
Packaged: 2017-12-13 17:11:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/826755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wordslikelightning/pseuds/wordslikelightning
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dean finds a winged boy who challenges everything he had been told about mutants. Maybe they all weren't as vile as he had been lead to believe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Been Years Since It's Been Clear

**Author's Note:**

> Kinda X-Men-ish, but really nothing to do with it besides mutated genes.

Today, Dean got to go on his first mission.  
  
He was finally joining the family business: saving people, hunting mutants. He had been training for this for years and at 18, he finally was able to prove to his grandfather that he could do it. He could track and bag a mutant on his own.  
  
His father got a tip from one of his informants from the inside.  
  
The Campbells, his mother’s family, have been capturing mutants for generations. Even before the secret of their mutated genes became public and they either went for the Cure or went into hiding. Dean’s mother, Mary, had seen the start of a family her ticket out and a pardon for her children. His father knew vaguely what his wife’s family does, something about detaining dangerous people, but never questioned it.  
  
When Sam, their youngest son, was six months old, Mary was killed by a mutant hell bent on revenge. He attacked her while she checked on Sammy in the middle of the night and the next thing John knew, he had pulled his kids out of their burning house.  
  
The Winchesters traveled regularly with their father as they grew. He restored classic cars for a living, which took him all over the country. On occasion, John would leave the boys with Mary’s parent’s while he took a job that would keep him longer than a weekend to complete.  
  
There, Dean and Sam were trained to fight while their father worked to support them. They had been taught to fear, to the point of violence, the genetically different. They grew up seeing them brought home in cages in order to ‘face the justice they deserve’. Their grandfather instilled in them that all mutants were untrustworthy, malicious and inhuman. What happened to their mother simply reinforced it all.  
  
Dean shook his head to clear the shadows of the past as he carefully picked his way down the bank of a steam, he followed it to where the mutant was sighted. His footsteps fell quietly as he searched tree branches above for signs. The informant had said the mutant in question looked human, besides a pair of huge wings. No doubt it had decided to go into hiding after the news of his kind spread and had thought no one would notice another flying thing among the trees.  
  
A noise and a fast moving shadow at the edge of his vision made him stop cold. His hand slipped carefully to the sheath strapped to his thigh. He gripped the hilt of one of his beloved throwing knifes, prepared to launch it at any impending threat.  
  
He turned slowly on the spot, breathing measured. A flicker draws his eye dark shape upon a branch in one of the larger trees. Just as Dean tensed his arm to throw the knife, the figure launched itself from its perch.  
  
Two sweeping charcoal grey wings unfurled, and the figure shot high between the dense branches and became concealed in the canopy.  
  
Dean heaved a sigh.  
  
This would not be a quick trip if it continued like this. He took up a post at the base of the tree opposite and slung his rucksack down next to him, he could wait.  
  
He soon found, that the mutant could too.  
  
He sat there for hours and the trek to reach this part of the woods was beginning to catch up with him. Dean leaned his head back against the rough bark, green eyes slid shut. “Just for a minute,” he thought.  
  
The rustle of the wind flowed through the leaves and the soft sounds of the forest lulled him into a deep sleep.  
  
...  
  
  
Dean felt something soft brush his cheek. It was warm and comforting, he unconsciously leaned into the touch. That is, until he remembered where he was and what he is supposed to be doing.  
  
He jolted up, knife at the ready, and eyes still blurry with sleep. They focused just in time to see long graceful feathers flitted out of sight.  
  
“Sonovabitch,” Dean slammed his fist onto the earth in frustration, but a touch on the back of his hand made him jump and recoil. He glanced down to see a wrinkled, brown paper bag.  
  
Curious, Dean raised his eyes to scan the branches as he investigated the contents and pulled out a portion of bread, an apple and a bottle of water. He looked dubiously at the items laid out in his lap. _Why would something he came to hunt feed him?_  
  
If it had wanted to kill him, it could have easily done so as he slept. He simply couldn’t shake the feeling that it had watched over him as he slept from its perch in the branches. This went against all of the things his grandfather had told him about mutant behavior. None of the actions were indicative of wanting to cause him harm.  
  
He didn’t know protocol for this. It looked like it was time to wing it. Yes, he saw the pun in that.  
  
“Uh... thank you,” he called to the forest at large. He had a feeling that it was still watching him. He ate because, well, Dean wasn’t one to pass up free food when it landed, literally, in his lap and used the time to think. When he finished the last bite and washed it down with half of the water, he decided to tried a new tactic.  
  
“Hey, are you still out there?”  
  
No response.  
  
“If your not, I’m going to look real stupid for talking to trees.”  
  
Still nothing.  
  
Dean sighed and looked at his hands. That was when he spotted the problem, his throwing knives were laid out next to him within easy reach. He gathered them together and set them at the base of a tree well out of his reach. He knew that this could end horribly; he was giving the other an advantage, especially because he still didn’t know the extent of their powers. But right now, he didn’t see another option. He was getting curious despite himself.  
  
He moved back to his original spot, plopped down and addressed the trees once more.  
  
“I’m not going to hurt you; I just want to talk to you.” He placed his hands behind his back, “just want to see you,” he called quietly in the voice he uses to get Sammy to do things when no one else can.  
  
Dean saw a wing slowly move out from behind one of the thicker trunks a ways away, followed by a pale slender hand, a tuft of messy dark hair and shining blue eyes.  
  
“It’s alright, see? I don’t have any weapons and my hands are behind my back. You can come out.” Dean tried to look as unthreatening as possible under the scrutiny of of his (he could tell the mutant was a him now), searching gaze.  
  
The dark haired boy soundlessly stepped out, crossed the space between them cautiously and sat cross-legged in front of Dean. The pair of dark wings that sprouted from his shoulder blades fanned themselves neatly on the ground on either side.  
  
All the boy did was stare.  
  
“Can you- uhh, can you talk?” Dean’s voice seemed so loud compared to the quiet that had settled around them. He hadn’t thought about it, but it was a possibility.  
  
The boy, who he could see was a year or two younger than himself nodded, but still didn’t say anything.  
  
“So, you can talk, but you just don’t wanna?”  
  
They boy nodded once more and tilted his head to one side. His gaze was even heavier now.  
  
“I’m going to take my hands out from behind my back, alright?”  
  
The nod was more stiff this time as he slowly removed his hands and placed them on his thighs.  
  
Dean decided that if the conversation was going to go anywhere, he would have to do it. “Why?”  
  
The boy blinked then raised a hand, fingers splayed, into the space between them. Dean looked at the palm for a second before realizing that he was supposed to mirror the action. When their hands met, he heard a kind of echoing. Dean’s eyes widened when he realized it was the boy’s thoughts.  
  
“You’re also a telepath?”  
  
He got the distinct feeling of ‘yes’ from the other.  
  
“But why can’t I hear you, like actually talking? With words?” Dean felt a sense of calm flow up his arm before the boy removed his hand. He reached forward and placed his first two fingers right between Dean’s eyes and heard a voice clearly in his mind.  
  
_“It is harder to transfer words through something that is made to feel.”_   The voice was deep and warm, and he everything he saw became tinged with blue around the edges.  
  
“Oh. Well, I’m Dean.”  
  
“Dean,” he tested it out before continuing, _“I am Castiel. Why did you come to kill me?”_  
  
Dean was startled at the words. He really hadn’t, he was only going to subdue the mutant he was given enough to take it back to- well, to whatever his grandfather does to them. It seemed the path worked the other way as well because before Dean could answer, Castiel asked another question.  
  
_“What have I done to warrant this? I am aware that I am different, but why should I be tortured for it? I have heard the stories about what your kind do to those like us, ‘mutants’. You kill our elders, mutilate our adults and enslave our children. Why do you think we hide from you?”_  
  
Dean was legitimately confused. Nothing the boy was saying was making sense. He never heard of anything like that? Sure some of the people his cousins had brought home had stayed to work around the house, but grandfather had always said that it was to help them, to ‘rehabilitate’ them. All of these conflicting thoughts flitted across his mind and Castiel’s eyebrows to knit together.  
  
_“You are unaware of what your family actually does.”_ Castiel moved onto his knees, inching closer to a frozen Dean. He moved his pale, slender hands to either side of the freckled teen’s face. Their eyes stayed locked until their foreheads were pressed together and Dean’s vision was blotted out by an onslaught of images.  
  
_A little boy with dark hair and tiny matching wings was being tossed in the air by what looked like his father while other children of varying ages flit around the room._

 _Screaming filled his ears and felt smoke in his lungs. He heard a voice yell,_ “Gabriel, take your brother and run!”  
  
_He saw a golden haired boy tugging the tiny raven haired one away from the house. The older was fighting back tears as he turned the other away from their burning house, forcing their eyes to meet._ “Cassy, we have to go now. I’m going to keep you safe, alright?” _He pulled the smaller boy into his arms, tucked his face under his neck, spread his shimmering gold wings and flew into the forest._  
  
Dean’s heart ached with an overwhelming feeling of loss. Even with his eyes screwed shut, he felt tears falling from down his cheeks and onto Castiel’s hands.  
  
_More scenes flicked across his field of vision. The honey-haired boy finding them shelter in a cave. Him holding the small Castiel to his chest as his body wracked with sobs and petted his unruly hair; making soft comforting sounds while he tried to not let the tears escape his own eyes._  
  
_It switched again, the boy, ‘Gabriel’, a voice supplied, was crouched before Castiel, begging him to speak. Flickers of years passing, learning to survive on their own in the forest, and Castiel slowly starting to speak again (if mostly telepathically)._  
  
_Now Dean saw Cas (Castiel was simply too long to keep thinking as he processed the information), leaning over Gabriel’s wing as the young man’s body contorted in pain._  
  
“Gabriel, hold still. You would not want to cause farther damage.” _He pulled his brothers face, just like Dean had seen Gabriel do years before, to look him in the eyes._ “I must remove the arrow and ensure it does not become infected. Please, brace yourself.”  
  
_He gripped his brothers thigh and buried his face in his forearms, giving the leg a squeeze to signify that he has ready. The scene changed just as Gabriel’s screams started. Dean saw Gabriel passed out in a small cabin the boys had built among the trees before he saw himself trudging thought the woods._  
  
_The colors faded, all he saw was black._  
  
His eyelids fluttered open to see Cas, forehead still pressed to his, breath come heavily from his mouth and his wings shook from the effort of projecting those images.  
  
“What happened to your brother?” The question was soft, tentative and breathless as Dean continued to process all he had seen.  
  
Castiel’s eyes stayed fixed on the ground and after a moment, he spoke into the other’s mind once more. “ _That happened three weeks ago. Once he was well enough to leave, he insisted to take his turn finding food, but.. he never returned. I have been searching for him since, but I fear the hunters who had injured him to begin with finally came back to ‘finish the job.’ I- I just don’t know what to do without him. I am so lost._ ”  
  
Dean felt waves of guilt/loneliness/worry through the connection that took his breath away. “Cas...” Dean was at a loss. He had never thought of it from this side, never considered that he had been taught a lie. Sure, his grandfather wasn’t the most pleasant guy, but he couldn’t... could he?  
  
The more Dean thought about it, the more sense it made. The rooms they could never go in when Pop’s was having his meetings. The basement door which was always excessively locked. The odd noise heard from the shed a ways away from the house in the dead of night that sent chills up your spine.  
  
It was as if the final puzzle piece had been set into place and it made Dean sick.  
  
“Cas,” Dean breathed, “I am so sorry.” He wrapped his arms around the boy and crushed him to his chest. After a moment, Dean felt tentative hands on his back before the clutched and held on for dear life, wings closing around them.  
  
After a long while, once their breathing had calmed and Castiel was no longer shaking, Dean pulled back, but kept a firm hold on the other’s arms. He waited until large blue eyes met determined green ones, “I will help you find your brother. No one deserves this. If I had know- If that had happened to Sammy-” He cleared his throat and tried again, “We are going to get through this Cas. I will get you through this.”  
  
Castiel’s lips pulled into a small grateful smile, his eyes became glassy with tears, opened his mouth and said in a rough, quiet voice, “Thank you, Dean.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!  
> I don't own anything, I just like to play here. The writers and creators get all the credit for making such wonderful places and characters.  
> Most works are not beta read. All mistakes are my own.  
> I can be found at theseeyesofmine or wordslikelightning on Tumblr if anyone is interested.


End file.
